Developing Management Meta‐competence: Can DistanceLearning Help?

The demand for management training and development is currently shaped by a requirement for flexibility in delivery, minimising time spent away from the workplace, and an associated demand for content relevant to the workplace activity. Distance learning is an effective response, but it encounters problems in terms of the learner′s vulnerability, learning styles, structural dysfunctions, the development of higher‐order or “meta”‐competences, and the seductiveness of methods of introducing “reality” into events. An attempt to address these problems is made in combining distance learning, discovery learning, and a computer‐based simulation and some of the key issues and problems encountered are identified.